


Son of a Gun

by PositivelyVexed



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Dom/sub, Gunplay, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Object Insertion, Post-Canon, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:21:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: After surviving the bloodbath at Minnie's, they both go their separate ways. That's not the end of it.





	Son of a Gun

**Author's Note:**

  * For [badmagician](https://archiveofourown.org/users/badmagician/gifts).



Warren’d found that the trick to drawing white men into conversation was to make them think they were the ones doing the drawing. So he’d been sitting at the bar for the better part of an hour with a small glass of brandy, pretending to be interested in conversing with everyone but the man he was after, until something he said finally caught the fellow’s attention.

“You say you do a trade in horses?”

“Sure do,” said Warren. “Me and my partner got fifteen of the prettiest mares you ever saw outside town. Bringing them into market in Casper.”

So began a delicate thing. He painted himself an easy mark—a black man, with a black partner-who-didn’t-exist, out alone on the range. He'd been banking on that for twenty years, men who didn’t ask themselves how he’d got to be this old, acting so trusting around white folks. So it was a good sign when he was invited over to the man’s table, began telling him the story of his life and his coat and his pretty horses, finest bred anywhere in western Wyoming. He spun a story of his past service burnished up to such a sheen any man’d be blinded by it. Most of all, he got him interested in those fifteen pretty horses he had stashed on the edge of town, with only a drunk of a brother standing guard.

It was good work. Doing this, tricking horse-thieves and murderers into following him out of town, waylaying men whose plans were easy to figure out, who didn’t have no brothers hiding in the cellar waiting to shoot his balls off, he felt like he was at home again. Feeling the rush of the hunt, whether out in the bush or here in a little backwater bar, wearing away at a horse thief’s resistance as easy as if he were playing some kind of instrument he knew and loved. 

So after two hours and a hell of a lot of bullshitting and smiling and chuckling at white men’s jokes, he was drawing ever nearer to getting Wilbur Winslow to ask to accompany him to his camp on the edge of town, where he could shoot the horse thief down without a lot of white folks getting skittish in the process. This was a process, and Warren was nothing if not patient.

All was going well, until a voice he’d never thought to hear again brayed through the crowd.

“Well, I’ll be double-dog damned.”

And there was Chris fucking Mannix standing in the doorway, snow melting on his coat, face all rosy from the cold. A crease across his forehead where his hat had just been.

“Major Warren, is that you? Well if it isn't a _damn_ small world.”

He hadn’t seen Chris Mannix in eight, nine months, since he’d peeled out of Red Rock as soon as his legs could bear to carry him, and he sure hadn’t expected to see Mannix now, in some mining town might as well have been a million miles from Red Rock, for all Chris Mannix had cause to be here.

“This some friend of yours?” Wilbur Winslow asked as Warren watched Mannix make his way over.

He wasn’t sure what the hell they were, and he’d thought he’d done his part to ensure the answer going forward was ‘nothing.’ They’d survived Minnie’s together, and he could allow that Mannix might have had something to do with that. Still he’d put miles between them as soon as he could. Put the past behind him, just another fucked-up thing that had happened to him in a lifetime of fucked-up things. And that should have been that. Except Chris Mannix was here, in the flesh, looking pleased as punch to see him, and about to blow his cover. 

He took a sip of brandy and waited till Mannix was within earshot to say, “Friend’s an overstatement. We shared a stagecoach ride together some months back.”

Mannix arrived by his side, slapped the table and laughed, looking at Warren like he still couldn’t believe it was him. “Sure did. And here I was afraid the major had gone and forgot me.” 

Warren shot him a look, and Mannix shot him one back. Shit-eating grin, but there was something sharp hidden in it—cunning, even—a look like the one he’d given him when he’d laid his hand on Warren’s arm back at Minnie’s and said, “humor me.” It was that funny look, and the fact that Warren’d remembered that fucking look at all, that made him pause. Mannix wasn't so stupid he couldn’t see what he was doing here, with an mean-faced bushwacker who looked an awful lot like the handbill for Wilbur Winslow, horse-thief and triple murderer, which Mannix should have recognized, being a fucking sheriff not two days ride from here and all.

“Wouldn’t have thought boys like you were so fond of boys like him,” Winslow, said, taking in their little tableau and stroking his moustache.

Mannix shrugged. “War’s over, ain’t it?”

Winslow’s bushy eyebrows rose skeptically. “Suppose that’s so. And who the hell are you?”

Before Chris could go and flash that sheriff’s star, ruining everything, Warren said, “This here’s Chris Mannix. He’s in the horse trading business too.”

Chris was in the process of lifting his drink to his lips when he heard that, and he thought Chris would be stymied by that, but he brought the glass to his lips, cool as anything, then downed the whole shot and slammed it back on the bar, face breaking right out into a big dumb grin. “Sure as hell _am_. Pleased to meet you.” 

And Chris was off and running, spinning bullshit about his non-existent profession like Warren knew he would. Warren tried to catch his eye, tell him he could get himself gone any time and let Warren get back to work, but Mannix seemed disinclined.

As he nattered about God knows what, Warren looked him over. He hadn’t seen him since the day they’d pinned a star on him. He was looking a bit less like he was knocking at the gates of hell.

Once, when Winslow was looking away, bent over in a coughing fit, he had a spare moment to raise his eyebrows at Mannix. _Well?_

Mannix mouthed something back. He wasn’t any kind of lip-reader, but he thought it might have been _the stables_. To punctuate it, he jerked his head in the approximate direction of the livery.

Warren started to shoot him back a look telling Mannix he had it all under control, when Winslow recovered himself, and Mannix eased right back into chatter without missing a beat. It was a minute later Warren got the rest of the story, when Mannix, in the middle of some yarn about god knows what, said, “So I turn around the corner of the stable, and there are three of the ugliest rats I’ve ever seen.”

Warren glanced at the horse-thief, but he didn’t seem to have picked up any deeper meaning in that, staring at Mannix with the glazed-eyed look of someone who’d let Mannix control the conversation for too long and had given up on wrestling it back.

“You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you, major?”

Warren sighed. Thank god old Wilbur didn’t seem to be much of a code-cracker. 

“I think I do, yeah.”

Mannix grinned at him. So it was, a few minutes later that Warren stretched, getting tired of waiting. “Well, it’s getting late,” he said. “Think I might head on back to camp.”

That got Winslow’s attention. “You all right with me following you back to camp and letting me take a look at them horses? I might save you the trouble of bringing them all into Casper.”

I’ll bet you will.

“Don’t mind at all.”

“You know, I got a mind to come along,” Mannix said, and Warren nodded at him.

So it was that they came to be crossing the slushy main street when Warren caught the shadow of the stables behind them, and yeah, looking closely, there were three shapes disappearing into the shadows.

He shot a glance at Mannix, and there was none of that goofy shit in his face now. He was ready for blood. Better to do it now, before Mannix’s prattle and the smoke and booze of the bar lifted and Winslow was any more on his guard. He nodded at Chris.

“Now which way’s this camp of yours?” horse-thief turned and asked. Warren shot him cleanly through the throat and took down one of the fellows in the stable. He heard shots coming from Mannix’s gun, and he shot true too. The last fellow stared at them for a moment, shock registering on his face before he too fell.

Warren turned to Mannix. “I had that under control.”

“Nice to see you again, too,” Mannix said, spinning his gun and holstering it, like he thought he was some jackass in a Wild West show.

“You think I didn’t count on his partners in the stable?”

Mannix frowned. 

“You knew?”

“I had a good idea.”

“But you didn’t count on there being three of them, did you?”

Which truthfully, Warren hadn’t, but he lied anyway. “Sure I did.”

“You’re a damn dirty liar, major. Winslow only just got the third partner just outside Red Rock. Rough Rob McCoy, always looking for trouble. I’ve been hunting the four of them ever since.”

They regarded each other for a minute.

“Didn’t expect to see you again,” Mannix said. “Looks like we got some knack for running into each other when we need it.”

It wasn’t a comforting thought.

They were interrupted by bootsteps on the stable boards.

“That’s it, big black fella. Turn around slowly.”

Warren sighed, and raised his hands. His warrant papers were already in his hand, because he’d done this too many times not to be prepared. He spoke in his most reasonable voice. “Evening, gentleman. I was just doing your town the service of bringing these four wanted men to justice. My associate here can attest to that.”

“I’m the sheriff of Red Rock, and I sure can.” Mannix flashed that star like a preening jackass, and Warren resisted rolling his eyes at that, considering the line of white men pointing guns at them.

He said in his most reasonable and get-along voice, “If one of you men is the sheriff here, I can just cash these bounties and be on my way.”

“I’m the sheriff,” lead asshole said, “And the safe we store the money in gets unlocked at sun-up, and not a minute before.” There was no arguing with a pissed off sheriff who resented being shown up by a bounty hunter at his own damn job in his own town, so that was that.

After the sheriff and his posse had departed with the bodies and a dark look, Mannix turned to him. “Looks like we’re both stuck in town until sun-up.”

“ _I’m_ stuck in town till sun-up. You can clear out any time you like.”

“Well I don’t like riding at night. Besides,” Mannix grinned at him. “Killing those bastards got me all worked up. I think I need a drink after that.”

He meant to tell Mannix to haul his redneck ass back to Red Rock, or straight back to Dixie for all he cared. They weren’t friends. Then he thought about how nicely Mannix’d drawn and fired that gun, how neat it was, blowing a man off the face of the earth. Might be he was a bit keyed up from it too. “I’ll drink if you’re buying.”

Mannix looked at him like Christmas had come. “ I never thought I’d see you again, major.”

“Yeah, well, that was the plan. Come on, before I change my mind.”

Killing the last man they’d sat down at the bar with gave them a chilly reception, but neither of them really gave a fuck about that. Instead of pouring them drinks, the barkeep pulled a bottle of mezcal off the shelf and said he’d sell them the whole damn thing, if they’d take their asses out of there and stop driving away the other customers. Since that was a better deal than buying by the glass, they agreed.

So they ended up back in the shitty little room above the bar that Warren had spent too much money on, crowded around the little table that was the only furniture in the room apart from the brass bed that sagged in the middle.

Mannix poured himself a drink and knocked it back in one go, stamped a foot on the floor like a mule. “Phew doggie, my blood’s still pumping. That felt good out there, didn’t it?”

“Been killing white men for forty years, and it ain’t lost its glow yet.”

Mannix forced his mouth into a frown, but it didn't stick and he ended up smiling at Warren as he poured himself another glass. He swirled it, looked up at the liquor catching the light. Then that smile turned back into a frown, like the white boy couldn’t work out what he was feeling.

“You know, that out there was my first act of killing as the sheriff of Red Rock. I mean, if you don’t count Daisy.”

“Sounds like the people of Red Rock ain’t getting their money’s worth.”

Mannix took another drink then laughed a hollow laugh. “Now, major, that just ain’t so. I’ve been cleaning out gutters, sorting out cattle disputes when the snow knocks the fences down, hauling the drunks in off the streets. You know, the shit no one tells you is part of the job. For a town whose last sheriff was shot, they don’t have much violence.”

“Sounds like the first honest work you ever done.”

Together, they were working fast through this bottle. Feeling each other out. Mannix still looked all kinds of wrong with that badge pinned on him, but he’d cleaned up well enough. And he was amused by the way he kept glancing at Warren, like he was checking to make sure he was real.

Mannix clicked his tongue knowingly. “I bet you’re still sore I was the sheriff after all.”

Warren shrugged. “I knew you were all along.”

“You lie like a rug, major.”

“No. See, John Ruth had it in his mind white folks up north wouldn’t hire a shitkicker like you. But that’s the difference between him and me. I got no faith in white folks to lose, so when I heard that, I thought to myself, sounds about right. Besides, I didn’t figure you for clever enough for making a story like that up on the fly.”

Mannix scowled. “I can’t think why I was missing you all these months, when I remember what a fork-tongued asshole you are.”

“You were missing me?”

“The point _is_ , this work ain’t what I thought I was signing up for. It’s boring. There’s no one in Red Rock I can talk to. There ain’t even anyone there worth pulling a gun on.” 

He thought again of the way Mannix had drawn that gun, fired it off smoothly. Thought again of the filed-off sight on the gun he’d held, the burnished nickel. Something clicked in his head, and he felt like a damn fool for not realizing earlier.

“You’re still using the gun I gave you.”

Mannix’s hand closed over the revolver in his holster. Not like he was moving to draw it, but like he was moving to reassure himself of its presence. “Well now,” he said, like it really was just occurring to him. “I suppose I am.”

Warren fixed him with a long hard stare.

“I gave you that gun to hold back at Minnie’s nine months ago, and you still using it.”

“Still using it to save your life.”

“That still don’t make it a gift, white boy.”

Mannix stared at him, like he thought he might be bluffing, then heaved a righteous sigh, and drew it out of his holster. He slid it across the table.

Warren picked the revolver up off the table, felt its familiar weight in his hand. “Shit, I figured this for lost. Thought about swinging by Minnie’s once or twice to look for it.” But he had steered clear. He wasn’t superstitious, just didn’t want to stir up old memories. 

Mannix looked at him. “You’d have known I had it if you’d come to see me even once in all the time we were holed up in Red Rock.”

“Why’d I want to do that?”

“Well I wanted to talk to you.”

That made Warren laugh out loud. “Chris Mannix, you been sore all these months that I didn’t say goodbye on my way out of town?”

“Goodbye? Major, you didn’t say one word to me the whole time we were there.”

No shit, he thought. He’d woken up shoved in some out of the way feed room, on a painful cot, that he’d have bet his last dollar no white man would have been shoved into, and the one doctor in town acting like he should be grateful for the experience. It hadn’t improved his mood any to learn that Mannix was recuperating in the bedroom upstairs, with a fucking window and fireplace, awaiting his swearing in as sheriff. 

He’d left the day they’d sworn Mannix in as sheriff, when the ground was still too hard to dig a shovel in, and everyone else who’d been in Minnie’s was still waiting in pinewood boxes for burial. He hadn’t been quite well then, but hell. He healed better on his feet anyway. The town had pulled together some fucking ceremony with a Bible and a crowd, just to pin that star on him. Warren watched for a minute from the edge of town. Seeing all that pomp in the name of ushering Chris Mannix into the ranks of law and order was enough to make a man lose any lingering faith in his country he might have had. Then he’d put Red Rock miles behind him.

He hadn’t given Mannix any thought since he’d ridden out. Why the fuck would he? 

But instead of saying any of that, he just said, “You could have walked yourself down to the store room they had me in any time you felt like it.”

“Major, I could barely walk, and no one would tell me a damn thing about where you were. You know you ain’t popular around there?” He crossed his arms in front of him. “I said to myself I was going to track you down myself after the swearing in, show my star off to you. But you up and left.”

“And so you carried my gun around as a reminder. That’s sweet, Chris. What would your daddy think if he knew?”

That struck Mannix dumb for a minute as he eyed that gun of Warren’s, like he was dearly wishing he still had it. Well, that was his own fault for thinking he could carry around something wasn’t his and not get it taken off him.

Mannix sighed. “I didn’t come up here to talk about my daddy. I came up here to talk about that fancy killing you and I did, at Minnie’s and again just downstairs. We can be friendly, can’t we? Maybe you can tell me what you been doing the last eight months.”

He very much doubted they could be friendly, but Mannix seemed so puppy-eager to know, he gave him a proper answer. “Mostly, what you saw downstairs. Once word got round that John Ruth was gone and I was on my back, lot of other bounty hunters rushed in to establish themselves. Had to teach ‘em Wyoming is still my territory. Must have killed thirteen men out from under them.”

“Now that’s the shit I came up here to hear about. Tell me about it. I been going stir-crazy in Red Rock without any action.”

“You really so drunk off your raiding days you driven to distraction by not getting someone’s blood on your hands?”

“Not all of us can live the sweet life you got, major.” he said. “Not having to answer to anyone but the bullet. Some of us got to content ourselves with keeping order in a _society_.”

Warren laughed at him. “Yeah, I could see how’d you’d be in a funk, having to be around decent society for once in your miserable life.”

He opened the cylinder of his gun up, took out the bullets, and peered inside. “See what I mean? You can’t even give a man his gun back clean.” He set it on the table. Wanted to see what Mannix would do. Mannix’s face darkened, but when he picked it up, he started taking it apart right there at the table, not looking too happy about it. Mannix kept his eyes on the gun as he worked. Without looking up, he said, carefully, “You really kill thirteen white boys in the last eight months?”

“You got cause to doubt me?”

“What else you do to them?” He reddened up after asking, removing any doubt about what was on Mannix’s mind.

And hell, he liked having a willing audience hanging on his every word. So he told him some things that would raise the hairs of most folks, but Mannix just soaked it all up. Even through all that distraction, Mannix handled that gun like a professional. His fingers knew their way around the parts, adjusting things here or there. He’d produced a little cleaning kit from somewhere on him, and was twisting his bore brush in the barrel, his fingers following the grain carefully like some master woodworker. Warren could almost appreciate the artistry of it, but that just got him thinking of all the bloody things he’d done with a gun to people looked a lot like him, and it took some of the shine off.

Still. He marked Mannix’s face, the way it blotched up when he told some particular detail about knifing a man in the snow, the way the blood gurgled up, hitting the snow still warm enough to melt it. He evidently liked that, the way his face was flushing up and he could barely keep his eyes on his work.

Chris Mannix was one ugly hillbilly, but there was something about the way he looked when he was hanging on Warren’s every word that was compelling. Not even a little bit able to disguise just how interested he was in Warren killing white men, and the barest possibility of him doing the other thing to them. Those fingers worked the gun distractedly. 

Nearabouts dropped the piece he was handling when Warren told him about slipping a noose around some fucker’s neck beneath a pine tree, making him dance.

“You break that, I ain’t going to be pleased. Keep your eyes on your work.”

Mannix caught himself, got his eyes back on his work. He could probably tell just as well as Warren had that something had shifted in the room.

He decided to push it further. “Be honest now, Chris. Lack of killing ain’t the only dry spell that’s got you worked up, is it?”

“That’s bullshit,” Mannix snapped, but he rammed that brush a bit too hard into the muzzle as he said it. “I get plenty of action in Red Rock. _Plenty._ ”

It wouldn’t lead anywhere good, Warren decided, to like winding him up as much as he did, but shit. He’d had his own dry spell for too long. “That so, Chris?”

“And what about you, black major? You found any southern white boys to have your way with?”

“Why,” said Warren calmly. “You offering?”

“Fuck no,” said Mannix. He looked for a minute like he desperately wanted to reach over, snatch back the bullets Warren was still holding, but instead he settled for reassembling the revolver with a furious intensity, and passing his piece back to him for inspection. Warren couldn’t find a damn thing wrong with it.

“That’s real good, Chris.”

He loaded it with one bullet, spun the cylinder, snapped it closed. For a moment he just held it in his hands, getting used to the weight of it again. It was like being reunited with an old friend.

Mannix swallowed. “Now you got two and I got none.”

“That’s what happens when you rely on what was never yours to keep.”

He stroked the wood handle, letting the memories rush back to him. “I’ve had this a long time. Bought it from Minnie, as a matter of fact. Killed the first bushwacker who ever came looking for me on that mountain with it, too.”

Mannix watched, and now that he didn’t have the revolver to occupy him any more, he didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He swallowed deep, sweat springing up on his temples, as he spread out his hands on the table, showing just how thoroughly disarmed he was. “Yeah? What else you do to that poor bushwacker?”

His heart warmed right up. “You mean. Did I make him suck me off?”

Mannix seemed to hate himself as he did it, but he nodded, eyes bright and hard.

“Well, he wasn’t a general’s son. He was just some nobody piece of hillbilly trash, like you. So, no.”

“I ain’t nobody,” Mannix said, then his red face got redder, like he’d just realized what he was arguing for. He closed his eyes, like he knew he was stepping off a cliff. “I’m the son of Erskine Mannix.”

“And it’s your contention I should treat you as such, huh?” He swung the gun on Mannix. “Come here, then.”

It was apparent how drunk Mannix was as he stood unsteadily on his feet. After a moment of wavering, he walked right on over. He stopped closer than a man who’s been called to heel technically needs to; Warren could smell the mezcal on his breath. 

His eyes went crossed as Warren brought the barrel of the gun up to his lips. 

“You want this, don’t you? Because you know it’s mine.”

Mannix nodded. Opened his mouth. It did something to Warren he wasn’t wholly prepared for.

Mannix looked like he’d never had a gun in his mouth before—which was hard to believe since no doubt, white boy’d had plenty of guns in the general vicinity of his face. He watched him make a face at the taste. Watched him lean in to get more of it in his mouth, watched him hollow his cheeks as he leaned in and sucked on that cold metal. Warren’s cock twitched hopelessly.

He gave him more of it, let Mannix gag a little around the unforgiving steel, then drew it out, watching a few inches of the barrel disappear and reappear between his lips. 

Mannix’s eyes slid closed, maybe thinking about that bullet, maybe hopefully calculating the odds that Warren had removed it from the gun while he wasn’t looking. Maybe wondering where in the cylinder it was, and maybe hoping Warren’d pull the trigger and put him out of his misery. Maybe thinking about what else he’d like to suck on. 

The latter must have won out, because he felt his hands fumble down to Warren’s pants. If he hadn’t already been at full attention, he was now, as uncertain fingers started slowly undoing his belt. “Good boy, Chris.”

Warren tilted the gun, clacking it against those big teeth as he forced Mannix to look down. He was enjoying the view of what Mannix’s hands were doing, and he wasn’t so cruel that he’d deprive Mannix of the sight too. But seeing what it was he was doing was apparently too much for Mannix, and his eyes slid closed in horror, though it didn’t stop either the bob of his mouth around the gun or the clumsy, slick-fingered battle to liberate each button along the path of Warren’s fly. He seemed too impatient to do it right, and just shoved his pants down as soon as they could be dragged down.

His eyes popped open then, credit where credit was due, curiosity overcoming shame when what he so evidently wanted was within grasp. He looked at Warren’s cock, already up and ready to go, then stretched out with trembling fingers, like he was daring himself to touch a hot stove. And even around that gun, with the metal bruising the soft back of his throat, him in danger of gagging, and trying hard not to, he moaned.  
And Warren wondered, for the first time, if he hadn’t been mistaken in walking out of Red Rock as soon as he was able.

He felt like he had when he’d first stepped back onto Southern soil, smoke and cannon fire already carried toward him on the wind. Realizing he’d left something undone that needed doing, and there was a satisfaction in returning to finish it. The way things seemed to have been waiting for him to return, like a dry pile of kindling, just waiting to go up in flames.

He thought about the blood on his hands, thought about how easily Mannix’s blood would splatter all across the pretty flowered wallpaper of the hotel room if he pulled that trigger, and if the chamber with the bullet in it had lined up just right. Something of the thought must have shown on his face, because what could only be described as a whimper escaped Mannix’s lips, and his lips started twitching, like they were just waiting for a chance to spell out a case on his behalf, get all wheedling with honeyed Southern charm.

And suddenly, what they were doing wasn’t near enough what he wanted to do to Chris Mannix. 

“Bend over that table.”

Mannix stared at the gun, then at him. There was something in his eyes that couldn’t rightly be read, and since Mannix was shit at hiding anything, he figured that spoke to some private not-knowing inside of him, like all his emotions were in such a hurry for the door they’d bottlenecked, leaving Mannix eerily blank faced. Came up off the tip of the revolver, leaving a trail of spittle glistening between the muzzle and his lips. Eyes searching Warren’s face, his jaw working without saying anything.

His hand hadn’t let up off Warren’s cock. Warren closed his own hand over Mannix’s, almost tender. 

“Go on, Chris. You can let go for now.”

He found he really wanted to see what Chris would do, like it mattered in some way, what he could get this fucked-in-the-head white boy to do on his say-so. How he could turn that murderous glee in on itself, get it channeled so it was all willing compliance.

And he complied. Shuffled over to the table, undid his trousers without being told, and let them fall around his knees, then bent over the table. His legs spreading a little, as much as they could. It sent a jolt through him just to see it. Warren ran his hand along the bottomside of his ass, felt Mannix shudder under him.

"This everything you dreamed of when you were tucked away in that lonesome sheriff’s bed in Red Rock after you got done with dreaming of bloody killings?”

He gave him the gift of a slap on the ass, and Mannix jumped, but kept his hands where they were and bit down on his moan. He tried to situate himself while making it something less than obvious that he was widening the spread of his legs. 

His hand drifted down to Mannix’s cock, gave it a cruel squeeze, just to remind him how hard he was.

“Look at you, wanting this so bad,” he murmured, stepping between his spread legs, so Mannix could feel his boots clink, spurs and all, against the floorboards, feel the wool of his trousers brush against his bare ass. Mannix shivered, looked like he wanted nothing so much as to bury his face into his hands, but his fingers were clenched with white-knuckle desperation around the edges of the table.

He brought his thumb up to his opening, stroked the callused pad against it, then stopped.

“You know, it just occurred to me. You want this so bad. So why am I the one doing all the work? You can open your own damn self up.”

“What?” Mannix said, eyes snapping open and finding his tongue. Apparently this was where Mannix drew his line in the sand. “Why?”

“Because I know you’ll do it.”

Mannix huffed deeply, and for a moment he shifted his arms like he was about to lever himself up and out of there. Then he barked a laugh that gave away just how drunk he was.

“All, right, major. I'll give you a fucking show.” And he paused, like he was working through logistics, probably never having fingered himself while standing before, although who knew what he got up to on his own time. He drew his finger to his mouth and slicked himself up, making a face, then reached around to behind him until he found his own hole. He took a breath then pushed in past the ring of muscle, his breath catching a bit as he slid one knuckle in.

Once he'd gotten two knuckles in himself, he turned, made sure Warren's eyes were on him. “You like that, you black bastard?”

“Your skinny ass? I've seen a hell of a lot better, but none of them saved me the trouble of opening themselves up before.”

Mannix dropped his head lower, so his forehead was almost touching the whiskey rings on the wood.

“I bet not,” he said, sounding disgusted with himself. But his hand had started working faster, and he slipped another finger in of his own accord.  
Warren put his hands on Mannix’s hips, squeezed him there.

“That's good, white boy. Be honest now, how many times you do this to yourself, thinking about me?”

“I thought about you,” he said, voice ragged. “Thought about how I'd like to wring your neck for leaving without so much as a goodbye.”

“And instead you wrung yourself out a dozen times or more thinking about me.”

Mannix heaved a pained breath. “Major, you got some special kind of need to make up stories about yourself. It’s damn tiresome.”

Warren’s hand drifted up the slope of his back.

"You could help," Mannix said, trying to sound neutral.

"My hands are right where I want them to be." He'd landed at the base of his neck, and rubbed a circle there for a moment. He tightened up his grip, letting the calluses of his fingers fit into the notches of his throat. Mannix swallowed, and he could feel it.

Mannix's breathing drew shallow and his thrusting got shallower too. He could feel the heat rising off his throat, could feel how his pace slowed as Warren tightened his grip. "I think you've had enough fun with yourself," he said casually.

And Mannix’s hand went slack and he pulled out, trying not to wince as he did it. Warren got him turned around and up on the bed, so he didn't have any choice in facing him. Seeing him all hard and his skin flushed up a nice shade of red wasn't anything a man could complain about.

He didn’t seem to know if he was getting Warren’s cock or Warren’s gun, and the dazed, hungry way he looked at him, he didn’t seem much to care, as long as it was Warren’s. When Warren braced the muzzle against his gaping hole, he flinched at the cold iron, but he let his legs fall open a bit wider. 

“Goddamn it, major. You are one fucked up, bloody-minded bastard.”

"It seems to me," he leaned in, whispered in his ear, as he pushed the revolver in, inch by inch, "That you aren't the type to answer to a whole town of men. You’d rather take orders from one man.”

Mannix flinched against all that steel, but there was no stopping it. “You know I would.” Mannix seemed driven past the point of caring what happened to him. But that didn’t seem to stop him from whispering, “Fuck, just like that.”

He ran a finger down his sternum, gave an experimental thrust of the gun, let Mannix try to adjust to that. Mannix was tight, for all the work he’d done loosening himself up. Warren gave himself over to it, the feel of him hot and too tight and wincing around his gun, around the gun Mannix had killed with on his orders, and carried around all these months thinking of him. Going all in at this like he went all in on killing. 

Mannix gave up pretending he didn’t like the hurt. Gave up pretending even that he didn’t like wondering if he was going to die.

For all that it was deadly, the barrel was thin and the wrong shape to go deep. The thrill came in knowing it was happening, that Warren could have him so thoroughly at his mercy, and that Mannix would take it. But enough was enough, and soon enough Mannix was sighing in frustration. 

“Wouldn’t you rather fuck me yourself, major?” He seemed to hate himself for saying it, but he said it just the same. 

And shit, yeah, he would. Wanted that more than he wanted to prove a point. Or rather, he’d finished making one point to Mannix, so he figured he could move along well enough to the other. 

Truth be told, though, he didn’t last long when he finally eased himself inside. The sight of his pistol in that white boy’s taut white ass, reduced to a hole to be filled up with whatever Warren felt like, had pushed him almost to the edge. They thrust together with some desperate, sweaty thrusts, and it was over too damn fast.

After he pulled out, he stood back. Mannix, sprawled out on the bed, watched with lidded eyes as Warren opened the cylinder. Showed him the bullet, nestled there in the top chamber.

Mannix blanched. “You could have killed me.”

“That’s the whole point,” Warren said. But then, he hadn’t, had he?

Mannix just nodded at that. Like he knew as well as Warren that they were always playing with a loaded gun, just by being who they were to each other.

When they were cleaned up and dressed again, Mannix threw himself into the chair and poured himself the rest of the bottle, he drank it down in one gulp. Warren was feeling pretty good about himself. Better than he’d had any right to expect.

He put the gun on the table in front of Mannix. “It needs cleaning again.”

Mannix made a face at it. “Hell no. You messed it up yourself this time. It’s your problem now.”

“I ain’t unreasonable. Clean it up, and I’ll let you hang onto it.”

Mannix’s eyes widened before he could stop himself. He reached out and picked it up, spit and spunk still on it. “Really?”

He shrugged. “It still ain’t a gift, mind you. It’s a loan, until you can get yourself your own. When I swing back through Red Rock, I expect to find it in good condition. Until then, you hang onto it, and you remember who it belongs to and where it’s been.”

Mannix started to disassemble it with a small smile. “No danger of forgetting that.”


End file.
